The exhibition “Vodka Cola” by Matteo Gatti at the Giampaolo Abbondio Gallery reflects on the relations between places, work, and exploitation. The artist, with the irony that always permeates his work, analyses the passage from a traditional industrial world to the contemporary one, in which private life and work melt together and we cannot separate them anymore. Pivotal in his work is the investigation of perpetual productivity, in opposition to the “heroic unproductivity”, a space of freedom in which we can subtract ourselves from the imperative of production, an act of resistance.
The title of the exhibition is the same as the Area s song (1978), in the album "Gli dei se ne vanno", gli arrabbiati restano!" ("The gods leave, the angry ones remain!") published when the communist party and the Christian Democracy were in dialogue and the political climate was characterized by tensions. The Vodka is the symbol of the USSR while the Coca-Cola represents the USA: the title is a metaphor for the Cold War, an association that aims to underline how both capitalism and socialism ultimately controlled people.
With installations, photographs, and site-specific interventions accompanied by Alessio Barettini s texts, Matteo Gatti intertwines past and present, in a dialogue in which he interrogates the spectators on the space of resistance they can build in the present and future.
Vodka Cola, Matteo Gatti
February 26- April 24 2025
Playlist by Giampaolo Abbondio
Via Carlo Poma, 18, 20129 Milano (access in Via Archimede)
Monday 11.00 AM TO 1.00 PM / 2.00 PM - 6.00 PM / On appointment
